The Kansas City Police Department’s request for a nearly 22% budget increase is “not feasible” while the city faces a $100 million shortfall, Mayor Quinton Lucas said Wednesday.
The Board of Police Commissioners last week approved a budget ask of more than $417 million, or about $50 million more than last year. The department said it needs the money for, among other things, personnel costs, legal settlements and hiring more officers in anticipation of the World Cup in Kansas City next summer.
City Manager Mario Vasquez recently ordered a freeze on budget funding requests, estimating a $100 million gap between expected revenues and expenditures in the next fiscal year. The city’s forecast for the next five years shows revenues staying steady while other costs are rising faster than expected, officials said.
Lucas said the board commissioners may not be aware of the city’s budget challenges, but that KCPD’s finance team knew about the problems. Perhaps the request was made as a bargaining tactic, Lucas said, but “it is not feasible at all.”
KCPD is no different than any other city department, Lucas said.
“So while we need to make sure that we have good policing in Kansas City, we also need to make sure toilets flush, and water goes somewhere. We need to make sure that roads are laid. We need to make sure that we have clean parks,” he said.
Already, 25% of the city’s budget must go to police, thanks to a voter-approved constitutional amendment passed in 2022.
Lucas, who is a member of the five-person board appointed by the Missouri governor, said he abstained from voting on the budget request last week. The plan will next be reviewed by Vasquez and he, along with the mayor, will submit a full city budget to the city council in February.
During an Oct. 14 commissioners meeting, KCPD Major Josh Heinen said 90% of the requested increase is attributed to personnel costs. Among other plans, the department is asking for $7.5 million for legal settlements, $2.5 million to hire an additional 50 sworn officers and $1.7 million to fund positions for 10 new 911 call-takers and 20 dispatchers, Heinen said.
“A majority of this, honestly, we really don’t have a lot of control over it,” he said. “It is stuff that we have to have to manage the day-to-day operations of the police department.”
The department also wants to increase officers’ starting salaries from $65,000 to $70,000.
Legal settlements have made lots of headlines, including a $4.1 million settlement with the family of Cameron Lamb, a Black man who was killed by a KCPD officer. This year the board approved more than $10 million, Lucas said, for lawsuits that include claims for discrimination, wrongful death and excessive force.
“There are important things that are not funded because we are paying police lawsuits,” Lucas said. “That is something I think needs to be discussed more and we need to find ways to reduce that type of liability for the people of Kansas City.”
